


Like Wild Birds

by iberiandoctor (jehane)



Series: A Journal of Birds [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Accidental Revenge Porn, Alternate Universe - Javert lives, Angst, Bathtubs, Birds, Cute Fluffy Ducklings, Diary Style, Duck à l'Orange, Ducklings - Freeform, Epistolary, Javert Keeps Notes, Javert’s Journal, M/M, Memoir, Montreuil Investigations, Montreuil-era, Poorly Negotiated House-Sharing, Post-Seine fix-it, So Many Bird Metaphors, Toulon-era, happy endings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-11-29 00:18:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11429256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: It was in front of this Gorbeau house that Jean Valjean halted. Like wild birds, he had chosen this desert place to construct his nest.Over the years, Jean Valjean observes wild birds, and dreams of flight. (In other news, Javert accidentally writes revenge porn about M. Madeleine.)





	1. Toulon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ellamason](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellamason/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _With the constellations of space they confound the stars of the abyss which are made in the soft mire of the puddle by the feet of ducks –_ Vol 1 Book 1 Ch 12

This is the note book kept by me, Adjutant-Guard Javert. 

I came to Toulon in December of 1803, from Hyères in the east. It is where I used to have family, but no longer. 

Section Head Maugin says a diligent guard should keep notes. This is so that we can fill in the bagne's register accurately. I have been doing thus every day. 

It is a lot of work. But I should practice my hand writing, and besides it is less dull than reading the bagne’s regulations. 

I have requisitioned a year's worth of writing supplies from the store and told the quarter master that M. Maugin instructed it be so.

I am ready to do my duty.

  
  


***

  
  


____ September, 1804_

On this day I took the morning patrol upon the sea wall to observe the convicts at their toil.

I made a note of the following: (1) Prisoner 29658 was clearly not picking up his own weight, (2) Adjudant-Guard Bosquet, who was supervising the chaîne, did not punish him for his sloth, and (3) Prisoner 24536 was scratching what looked to be a large infected boil on his nose.

I told my immediate chief, M. Anton, that 24536 ought to be sent to the infirmary for treatment of the infection. M. Anton told me to mind my own business. 

I am in doubt. According to regulations, prisoners ought to receive medical treatment if they fall ill. 

I will consider whether to make a report. If so, these notes will stand as a contemporaneous record of events.

Prisoner 24601 was standing by me with his chain-mate, 27470. He is an uncommonly strong prisoner, built like a wall, with very wide shoulders and chest and thighs. He is much stronger than me, although he is shorter in build than I am, like many men are. He is certainly stronger than anyone in the bagne.

He looked as if he had heard what I had said to M. Anton, because he looked sharply at me before turning away and lowering his eyes.

I have my eye on that one. I cannot say why. 

   
  


***

  
  


____ April, 1805_

Today I took the evening patrol. I performed the circuit about the grounds at my usual pace. 

When I approached the sea wall I came upon Prisoner 24601. He had graduated to the demi-chaîne for good behaviour. So, he was standing there alone.

I observed him in case he was up to no good. Maybe he was at the sea wall so he could plan his escape.

Then I noticed the convict's face was turned to the sky, and he was watching the seagulls overhead. He is a big man, especially in the shoulders and thighs. He is at least ten years older than me. But for a moment he looked like a boy. The lines in his face had gone and his blue eyes were shining. It was as if like those wild birds he was longing to fly free.

I felt almost sorry for him. But then I told myself: this would not do. Citizens who make the choice to break the law deserve to be locked up. It says so in the Code Pénal.

He noticed me then and his face closed up. He turned away and started to walk in the direction of the yard.

It would not surprise me if that convict has got a dangerous idea in his head.

  
  


***

  
  


____ January, 1806_

On this day 24601 tried to escape. He took off by himself in the morning when Adjudant-Guard Bosquet was in charge. The team had been sent to repair the section of the sea wall near the bridge that connects the bagne to the main land. It was not until the noon time roll call that his absence was discovered.

We hunted him down while it was still light. He had run away from the town. He was probably afraid that someone would see him in his red smock. He was holed up in an abandoned shack on the coastal road, waiting for darkness. But we brought dogs from the garrison and the dogs caught his scent. 

It was me who found him. Like a falcon swooping upon a gull, I caught hold of him and brought him back to Toulon. 

He was flogged. I did not do it myself, but I watched as he was marked by the lash of others. I noted that this flogging was rightful and appropriate in accordance to the regulations of the bagne.

When he was released from solitary confinement it was back to the chaîne for him.

I am glad I did not permit myself to feel sorry for him. Otherwise I would feel very foolish indeed. Criminals like him need a firm hand. 

They definitely ought not to watch the birds and think of flight.


	2. Montreuil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Like an owl, who should suddenly see the sun rise, the convict had been dazzled and blinded, as it were, by virtue._ – Vol 1 Book 2 Ch 13
> 
>  _Madeleine raised his head, met Javert's falcon eye still fixed upon him, looked at the motionless peasants, and smiled sadly. Then, without saying a word, he fell on his knees, and before the crowd had even had time to utter a cry, he was underneath the vehicle._ – Vol 1 Book V Ch 6

I commence this fourteenth volume of my personal journal on this ___ day of January, 1820, with my posting to the sub-prefecture of Montreuil-sur-Mer in the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France, as its Inspector of the municipal police. 

I regret that only the first three volumes of the old journal from my posting in Toulon remain intact. I am indebted to my old patron, M. Maugin, for instilling in me the habit of keeping notes of active observations and investigations.

I owe the post which I occupy to my patron, M. Chabouillet, the secretary of the Minister of State, Comte Anglès, Prefect of Police in Paris. I recognise the great debt I owe M. Chabouillet and my greater obligation to ensure that I am worthy of this position. 

My patron would be familiar with the undertaking upon which I have staked my reputation and my life. Society is the beginning and end of civilisation. Society excludes from itself two classes of men – those who attack it, and those who guard it. Born into the first, I elected to espouse myself inextricably to the second, and to make myself an foundation of rigidity, regularity, and probity. 

In the nine years during which I have been privileged to serve with the police, I have never given my superiors any basis for reproach.

When I arrived at M-sur-M, I noted that the town was prosperous, and that the misdemeanours were few. The citizenry was by and large law-abiding. The garrison was adequately provisioned. While the men located at the station-house seemed unprepossessing, they did not suffer a lack of competence as I had at first feared.

There was one aspect of note to report. 

The fortune of the town appears to be centred upon one business: that which manufactures ornaments of black glass. There is a large factory in the low town, which employs hundreds of workers in two vast rooms; it has an adjacent dispensary and infirmary. A new quarter, in which there were a good many indigent families, had arisen rapidly around the factory, and the business had funded new beds in the district hospital and two new schools, one for boys and one for girls. 

The manufacturer is a gentleman known as Monsieur Madeleine. It seems this man had arrived in town on the eve of the town-hall fire of 1815. According to eyewitnesses, he rushed into the flames and saved, at the risk of his own life, two children who belonged to the captain of the gendarmerie.

In the intervening four years, this gentleman established this manufacturing business in black glass and saw it thrive. He is much respected by the citizenry. I was introduced to him in the street in the most effusive terms by the town’s deputy.

“Father Madeleine, this is Inspector Javert, of the municipal police, sent to us from the Prefecture of Police in Paris. Inspector, may I present to you the esteemed manufacturer and philanthropist, Monsieur Madeleine.”

I looked into a broad, sun-burnt face. I beheld eyes of bright blue. He was dressed in a bourgeois’ clothes, but underneath the silks and finery I beheld a body that was uncommonly wide in the shoulder and chest, the burly body of a fighter.

I could have sworn I had seen those eyes before. I could also have sworn those shoulders were not unfamiliar to me.

“Welcome, M. l’Inspecteur,” the man said, thoughtfully. “I hope you will find your time here to be useful to you.”

His grip was certain and strong, like that of an eagle or some other predator. I was compelled to clasp back.

“I am always ready to be of use,” I said.

His eyes held mine thoughtfully, as if he, also, could have sworn he had seen me before. “As am I,” he said. He bowed to me, and I to him, as was proper. 

But in truth I did not feel at all proper towards those blue eyes, those broad shoulders which were as wide as a wall. 

What is that man, after all? I certainly have seen him somewhere. In any case, I am not his dupe.

 

***

 

____ February, 1820_

More than two weeks ago, I had a dream.

The sky was not the overcast northern sky of Montreuil but the untroubled blue of the south. An uncommonly large, brutish man in a red smock stood on a wall facing the restless sea, his face turned to watch the gulls overhead. 

The convict's body was on display under the threadbare red rags. There were the brawny muscles that had toiled in the workhouses of the state, the exposed flesh that bore decades of wear from the chain. There was the stoic face that had contorted in agony under the bagne's discipline. I remembered the feel of the lash in my hand, remembered how it had felt to discipline him with it, his body yielding under the rough, thudding rope, the lash pulling groans from him as it had with so many others like him.

When I woke, I had it. 

It had been more than ten years since I last saw him. The man Madeleine, with his gentleman's manners, in all his finery, was that bagnard of Toulon, Prisoner 24601, also known as Jean Valjean. 

I pulled up the volumes recording my experiences in Toulon. The uneven handwriting and clumsily-formed sentences of two decades ago dismayed me temporarily. But soon enough I was paging through my past, and I saw the references I had made to 24601, to the blue eyes and broad shoulders of Jean Valjean.

I wrote to Toulon, seeking intelligence as to Valjean's present whereabouts. It seemed M. Maugin had retired from service, but another officer, Desaix, had been promoted to a position at M. le Commissaire’s office, and he was able to turn up the records for me. 

Two weeks elapsed and on this day I received the answer from the bagne. 

Jean Valjean, 24601, was released with his yellow papers in 1815. On leaving the galleys, this parolee robbed a bishop; then he committed another theft, accompanied with violence, on a public highway against the person of a little Savoyard. He broke his parole and has not been seen since, for five years. The timing of this was indeed co-incident with Madeleine’s arrival at M-sur-M.

I know I must take great care. I have not forgotten 24601’s proclivities for escape, nor the prodigious strength which lies within that massive breast, under those wide shoulders. I must hunt him silently, I must lay the trap cautiously. 

He will not be able to escape me.

 

***

 

____ March, 1820_

Today a matter of great import occurred.

There had been an accident in the Cavée Saint-Firmin, a steep road at the entrance to the upper city. An old man named Father Fauchelevent had just fallen beneath his cart. The horse had two broken legs and could not rise, and the old man was caught in the wheels.

I was on patrol at the time when I heard the cries. I hastened to the scene. When I arrived, Fauchelevent was rattling in the throat. The fall had been such that the whole weight of the vehicle rested on his breast. The cart was heavily laden, appearing to my trained eye to exceed the maximum load limit permitted by regulation.

Other citizens had tried, but in vain, to drag him out. An unmethodical effort, aid awkwardly given, would clearly kill him. It was impossible to disengage him otherwise than by lifting the vehicle off of him. It had rained on the preceding night; the soil was soaked, and the cart was sinking into the earth with every minute.

I sent for a jack-screw. The nearest one was at M. Flachot's residence, where there was a farrier. It was a quarter of an hour away. I could see immediately that, given the subsistence of the ground, the jack-screw would not arrive in time.

As Fauchelevent was begging for aid, none other should arrived on the scene but M. Madeleine, in his black coat and bourgeois hat, his fine trousers and black boots. People stood aside respectfully.

"Fetch a jack-screw!” he exclaimed.

Well, of course we had done that, as the townsfolk explained to him; they also explained how long it would take.

"It is impossible to wait," said Madeleine. "Don't you see that the cart is sinking?" 

Again, that was plain as day to every man there.

"Listen," resumed Madeleine; "there is still room enough under the cart to allow a man to crawl beneath it and raise it with his back. Is there anyone here who has stout loins and heart? There are five louis d'or to be earned!"

As I could have easily predicted, not a man in the group stirred.

"Ten louis," said Madeleine.

This was similarly met with silence. Someone muttered: "A man would need to be devilishly strong. And he runs the risk of getting crushed!"

"Come," began Madeleine again, "twenty louis."

This was plainly ridiculous. "It is not the will which is lacking," I remarked. "It is strength. One would have to be a formidable man to do such a thing as lift a cart like that on one's back."

I knew my opening. I stared into that face that I recognised, the eyes that were the blue of Toulon’s skies. I emphasised every word as if I were placing him formally under arrest.

"Monsieur, I have never known but one man capable of doing what you ask. He was a convict. In the galleys at Toulon."

Madeleine turned pale under the sun-burned hue of his skin, a hue no bourgeois’ skin should carry, but which was commonplace in the bagne.

I pronounced: "I have never known but one man who could take the place of a screw, and he was that convict."

Fauchelevent cried something about being crushed. It seemed to come from very far away, as indeed everything else about this moment.

I stared into Madeleine’s eyes with the fixedness of a falcon. The man lowered his gaze, before smiling sadly, as if he knew himself revealed at last. 

Then, without saying a word, he thrust off his coat, fell on his knees, and before the crowd had even had time to utter a cry, he flung himself into the mud, underneath the cart.

It was unthinkable. For a dizzying moment I almost believed that Madeleine had chosen to put an end to himself to avoid rightful capture.

A terrible moment of expectation and silence ensued.

I beheld Madeleine, lying almost flat on his stomach in the soft muck, beneath that terrible weight. His broad body convulsed. He made two vain efforts to bring his knees and his elbows together. 

Around me the townsfolk were shouting, things such as: "Father Madeleine, come out!" and “You will perish!” Fauchelevent himself belatedly bleated something about Madeleine leaving him to die.

I perceived that I was breathing heavily. The wheels had continued to sink. It was impossible for Madeleine to escape from under the vehicle. He would die, he would escape me through his death, and I would lose him to this heroic act. I was shaking all over; it could not be borne. 

Suddenly the enormous mass was seen to quiver. The cart rose slowly, the wheels half emerging from the ruts. Madeleine’s voice, barely recognisable: "Make haste! Help!" 

Everyone rushed forward, even I. The cart was raised by twenty arms. Fauchelevent was saved.

Madeleine rose from the muck as if from the grave itself. He was pale and dripping with sweat, as if he had been labouring in the bowels of Toulon. His fancy clothes were ripped and covered with mud, and I could not look away. 

The evidence was plainly there, revealed for all to see – those brutal thighs and loins, barely covered by the sodden trousers; the torn, muddy garments clinging to the outline of the heaving barrel chest and massive shoulders – all the unmistakable signs of convict strength harnessed in the mire of the bagne.

Everyone was weeping. Fauchelevent was clasped around Madeleine’s calves, kissing his legs and calling him the good God. 

It was indescribable. I observed upon Madeleine’s perspiring countenance an expression of contented, tranquil suffering. He stared at me, and I stared back. 

 

***

 

____ April, 1820_

It was after this incident with the cart that I commenced my investigations in earnest.

I spoke with my subordinates at the station-house, and more constructively with the postmistress. I uncovered the fact that M. Madeleine had initiated some inquiries at Faverolles, which co-incidentally was the same birthplace as that of Jean Valjean. 

I then sought to identify all the anterior traces which this so-called Father Madeleine might have left elsewhere. Covertly, I contacted the authorities in the district which had charge of Faverolles.

I have high hopes of these enquiries. He will not escape me, this blue-eyed convict.

 

***

 

____ July, 1820_

I regret to report that my investigations regarding Faverolles have come to naught. 

When the indirect train of enquiry proved unfruitful, I took the time to visit that district to pursue the matter myself. 

It was a difficult visit. The level of penury in that part of the country is not easy to address. What is relevant is this: the family of Jean Valjean is no longer there. It is not known where they have gone. 

In my line of work, it is well known that among those classes a family often disappears. Search was made, and nothing was found. When such people are not mud, they are dust. There is no longer anyone at Faverolles who knew Jean Valjean.

It seems that the thread which I thought I held is broken.

  
  


***

  
  


____ September, 1820_

I have resolved not to be disheartened as to the avenue of my enquiries. When one door closes, another opens.

I will take great pleasure in unmasking him. And when Valjean is finally exposed, I will ensure that he is stripped of his fair clothes, his bourgeois manner, his surface respectability, to reveal the evidence marked upon his body that time cannot erase: the scars left by the bagne's restraints and the bagne's lash, the proof of the bagne's claim. 

 

***

 

____ November, 1820_

On this day the factory owner became the mayor, an honour which he has refused once before, but no longer. The convict has raised himself to an unthinkable station. 

The world has been lifted off its hinges.

I beheld the man clothed in the scarf which gave him authority over the town. I felt the strangest sensation steal over me. My suspicions, my careful investigations, have all come to naught. There is no shred of proof, and yet -- there he is, a wolf in the clothes of the master, an owl clad in false plumage. 

 

***

 

____ May, 1821_

For these many months, I have sought to keep away from the mayor, M. Madeleine. These days I believe I might yet succeed.

From the time of his appointment last year, I tried to avoid him as much as I possibly could. When the requirements of the service demanded it and I was obliged to meet the mayor, I addressed him with profound respect.

I told myself then, and indeed I tell myself now, constantly, that it is not right to continue to suspect him. It is not fitting for a servant of the law to imagine that beneath his respectable garments, the new mayor wears, upon that unseemly neck and back and wrists, the unmistakable mutilation of iron. 

And yet this is what I continue to do. From afar, I watch him going about his business in the town, garbed in propriety and serenity and scarf of office, and I cannot help but see the brawny, brutish, undeserving criminal in disguise. 

I watch Madeleine and study his gait, trying to determine if the slight drag of polished right boot is indicative of the bagne’s shackle. I catch myself wondering as to how I might witness similar evidence around those wrists, around that powerful neck, across the broad shoulders and back so carefully hidden from view. 

Alas, Montreuil has no bath-houses, and Madeleine has not visited its tailor in years. When I am summoned to meet the mayor in his offices, he is always covered: cravat modestly secured around his neck, shirt cuffs covering his wrists almost to the knuckle, secretary at his side.

Perhaps if he asks me to dine with him, or to accompany him to Mass, he will let down his guard. If I am alone with him, perhaps I can catch my hand about his cravat and unfasten it from his throat. I would be able to rip his shirt from his body and see for myself if the stripes of Toulon truly decorate his flesh. 

If I conceal myself in his bedchamber when he retires for the night, I might watch as he attends to his ablutions, as he puts off his cravat and his shirt to ready himself for bed. Under the light of a candle, I might see the proof of his identity marked indelibly upon his sun-burned skin. 

This is what I am reduced to, frantically contriving circumstances under which I might encounter the man unclothed.

I would be ashamed, had I not lost my claim to any restraint at all in the matter of Jean Valjean.

 

***

 

____ July,1822_

For these many years, there has been prosperity in M. sur M. This is demonstrated by the recent ease in collecting the due imposts from the tax-paying citizenry of the district. In the course of seven years, the expense of collecting the taxes has diminished three-fourths in M. sur M. I understand this has led to the arrondissement being cited at the beginning of this year, 1822, from all the rest by M. de Villèle, Minister of Finance.

As it happens, with the rise in prosperity there has been a reduction in need, and a reduction in petty crime. The Prefect would know I am no apologist for criminals, but I would be blind not to see at least some degree of correlation.

I would also be blind not to see that this prosperity is in large part thanks to the labours of our new mayor. 

This is the man whom I follow with my eyes in the daytime and in the night, trying to decipher the rhythm of his stride, unable to forget the untrammelled strength of his loins under Fauchelevent's cart and how afterwards the sodden trousers clung wantonly to his thighs, displaying their power. 

I watch him in the bright glare of noon, under starlight, and wonder why I did not then tear aside the muddy rags to expose the shame laid upon his shoulders. I would have likely been set upon by the irate townspeople, but I would have had the satisfaction of knowing myself vindicated before I died.

Now all I can do is watch him and wonder if I am not irreproachable after all. My peculiarity of instinct, which has never before steered me wrong -- I worry that that instinct has become confused, thrown off the track, and defeated. Otherwise, it would be superior to intelligence, and the beast would be found to be provided with a better light than man. 

No. I cannot believe my instinct is confused. It leaped up within me that first moment we met in Montreuil, and it burns within me now, unerringly. This time, 24601 will not be able to fly away.

 

***

 

_2 January, 1823_

I can barely write what has happened. Yet I must make the attempt. 

It was a snowy evening. The recent conflict of the republics of South America with the King of Spain had caused certain public disagreements across France and in the streets of our quiet town, putting royalists against liberals. I was on patrol when a fight broke out in front of the officers' cafe.

I arrived on the scene in short order to witness a public order offence being committed; to wit, a fight between a man and a woman: the man struggling, his hat on the ground; the woman striking out with feet and fists, bare-headed and howling, minus hair and teeth, livid with wrath.

I strode into the fray and took hold of the aggressor by her satin bodice, which was wet with snow, and said to her, "Follow me!"

The woman raised her head; her furious voice suddenly died away. She turned pale instead of livid, and trembled with terror. She had recognized me, as all miscreants in this quiet town would.

I had no doubt as to what had just transpired. I had with my own eyes witnessed the commission of a crime. In the street, I had seen M. Bamatabois, a freeholder and an elector, attacked by a creature who was outside the pale of society. To be clear: a prostitute had made an attempt on the life of a citizen.

I conveyed the creature to the station-house. I considered my decision in this prostitute's case, in which I was authorised to exercise full discretionary power. Empowered by the Code Pénal to sit both as prosecutor and tribunal, as I do in all misdemeanours of this nature, I summoned all the ideas which could possibly exist that concerned the solemn thing which I was doing. 

The more I examined the deed of this woman, the more shocked I felt.

I had the habit of carrying the official papers in my pocket for a time of urgency such as this. As such, I seized the required form and wrote upon it the words of the deed of judgment and sentence. I duly signed, folded the paper, and handed it to the sergeant of the guard. I then turned to the woman and pronounced: "You are to have six months of it."

The unhappy woman shuddered and exclaimed. She made the usual pleas for pity as regards dependents and remorse. She even tried to rouse me to sympathy (and worse) by seizing my hand and placing it upon her bosom. 

I of course remained unmoved. "Six months, and it will be more if you continue obstructing justice in this fashion."

And then it happened. 

A wide-shouldered figure stepped out of the shadows: a flash of blue eyes, burly thighs I would recognise anywhere. "One moment, if you please."

I raised my eyes, and got to my feet. I could not imagine why he was here. Was he following me now and not the other way around?

I removed my hat. I saluted him awkwardly. He looked grave and noble, an eagle in full flight, and for one moment I despaired. How could I ever have thought such a magisterial figure was a fugitive from the bagne?

And then the prostitute sprang upon him and, in front of my men and me, she spit in his face.

A heinous act, monstrous! As much sacrilege as desecrating the statue of the Blessed Virgin! In any flight of fancy neither I nor my men would have considered such atrocity. Thus we did not defend against it.

And yet, perhaps this woman of the town, lowly as she was, from beyond the dregs of society -- perhaps her vile instinct recognised this man's, as a similar soul from the gutter, and reacted impulsively, criminal to criminal, compounding crime with crime. 

And that was not the end of it. Thus assaulted, M. Madeleine wiped his face, and said: "Inspector Javert, set this woman at liberty."

I felt these moments as fists to the face -- as blow upon blow, simultaneously. To see a woman of the town spit in the mayor's face was, as I said, a monstrous thing. But when I beheld that mayor calmly wipe his face and say, "Set this woman at liberty," I was dumbstruck. Thought and word failed me equally; I could not move or speak for astonishment.

The prostitute took advantage of my temporary impairment to try to flee. I snapped back to my senses and prevented her, demanding that the sergeant take her into custody.

And, monstrous, heinous, unthinkable fact: M. Madeleine placed his big hand on my arm and stopped me.

His grip was gentle, but I experienced it as if it were the cut of the lash. I staggered, I could not catch my balance for an instant, the familiar paving slabs of the floor swayed as if determined to bring me to my knees.

Somehow, I managed to find the words. "M. le Maire, I cannot release her. This miserable woman has insulted a citizen."

"Inspector Javert," replied the mayor, in a calm and conciliating tone, "here is the true state of the case: I was passing through the square just as you were leading this woman away; there were still groups of people standing about, and I made inquiries and learned everything. It was the townsman who was in the wrong and who should have been arrested by properly conducted police."

I could not imagine this was true. That he would supplant my investigations could not be countenanced! But what was indisputable was what we had just witnessed: "This wretch has just insulted Monsieur le Maire."

M. Madeleine said, "My own insult belongs to me; I can do what I please about it."

This was monstrously, atrociously incorrect. I shook off his hand. "I beg Monsieur le Maire's pardon. The insult is not to him but to the law."

"Inspector Javert," replied M. Madeleine, gently, "the highest law is conscience. If you do not see this, then content yourself with obeying."

"I am obeying my duty. My duty demands that this woman shall serve six months in prison. This is a question of police regulations in the streets, and concerns me, and I shall detain this woman Fantine."

And then M. Madeleine replied, in a stern and ringing voice: "According to the terms of articles nine, eleven, fifteen, and sixty-six of the code of criminal examination, I am the judge. I order that this woman shall be set at liberty."

This was, strictly, true. I could hardly speak. I ought to have expected that this criminal turned mayor would have made a study of the regulations so he could use them against me.

The legal felon was not yet done. "I refer you to article eighty-one of the law of the 13th of December, 1799, in regard to arbitrary detention."

"Monsieur le Maire, permit me--"

"Leave the room," said M. Madeleine.

I received the blow erect. I felt myself shamefully unsteady in all my limbs. I bowed before the mayor and left the room.

I almost staggered on the way to my office. The light in the corridor was so dim, I could barely see the path forward. In my head was a great pounding, a seething need to put the world to rights, to fetch punishment upon the malefactor that wears the mayor's face. 

Even now, I can hardly see the page before me as I write these words.

I solemnly pledge to bring the convict, Jean Valjean, to justice. It is not a matter of how long it takes. If it is years, if it is decades, if it is the rest of my life, so be it. If it is my fate to spend every drop of blood in my body in order that I may apprehend and imprison him once again, that is a price I would gladly pay.

I see it so clearly -- the false glory of the mayor's garb, the magistrate's serene countenance -- that must give way to the abject corruption of the bagne. I see my hands removing the mayor's scarf with the iron certainty of the Law, unfastening the silk cravat and revealing the marks of a very different collar with the rightful authority vested in me by the state. He will undoubtedly tremble as I remove his jacket and waistcoat and strip his trousers from those convict's loins, as I pull off the leather boots and hose to uncover the traces left by the shackle he wore for nineteen years. 

Finally I will take his starched cotton shirt in my fists, and I will tear it in two from his body, and everything will be discovered, as plain as day: the scars of the lash upon his shoulders and back and massive chest, red and silver from the chafing of chains and iron restraints, which no bourgeois, no figure of Authority, would legitimately wear, which will show him as a man who had toiled in Toulon for nineteen years.

Faced with indisputable evidence of his duplicity, Jean Valjean will have no choice but to surrender. His fabled strength will not be equal to that of the Law; with eyes full of contrition, he will acknowledge his own immorality; he will yield to the righteous punishment of authority.

When the time comes, I will finally put my hands on him and seize him and devour him. That is to say, arrest him, and bend him to the iron claim of the State, until his perilous muscles are placed once more in chains and those loins and thighs are concealed under a red smock where they can be no danger to anyone, until the criminal depravity is beaten from his body, and chastised from his very soul.

I have thought on these aforesaid matters until I find that I have quite broken the pen in my grasp. 

And so I have ceased my consideration of such things. Instead I take a new pen and shall begin to write a letter to my esteemed patron, M. Chabouillet.

 

***

 

 _3 January, 1823_

When I roused this morning, still marked by yesterday's events, I sat down to review these notes so I could include them by way of full report in my letter to M. Chabouillet, wherein I denounce the mayor as the infamous fugitive, Jean Valjean, who broke his parole and has been eight years on the run.

Regretfully, reading back upon the notes, I realise that they are not suitable for official consumption. An uncharitable reader might even consider them improper. 

I considered destroying the papers, in case they ever fall into the wrong hands and are used against me, but I decided against it. Perhaps they will be of some use to me in future in supplementing my original report, when I am asked to provide the detailed underlying evidence regarding my complaint against the mayor. 

Until then, I will keep these notes as a material contemporaneous record of my surveillance activities concerning Madeleine.

 

***

 

____ February, 1823_

And so the despatch has been sent to M. Chabouillet. We will see what comes of it.

In the meantime, I have increased my surveillance of Madeleine. 

Sensing a disturbance in the relations between us, he has sent a missive detailing pressing lines of investigation, and these I have pursued, like a faithful falcon: a complaint against carter Pierre Chesnelong for dangerous driving, leaking gutters at the house of M. Charcellay at Rue Montre-de-Champigny, infractions of police regulations which have been reported to me in the Rue Guibourg, at Widow Doris's. 

After the Rue Guibourg, I proceeded along the Rue du Garraud-Blanc toward the old town, and there, in the distance, I saw the mayor. It was late in the afternoon and had already fetched dark, but there was no mistaking those broad shoulders, that wide-legged stance. 

He stood at the wall of the old town, looking upward into the sky lit by the moon and the unforgiving stars, in the same attitude which I watched Prisoner 24601 adopt on the sea wall at Toulon.

I slowly approached, staying in the shadows, until I could see his upturned face under the starlight. No longer guarded and stern, his face was open with the same longing for respite as that prisoner of the bagne had shown, watching the gulls overhead and yearning for freedom. 

I could not countenance it. That this man at the pinnacle of his authority should now desire to be liberated of it, envying wild birds in their heedless flight? One might as well wish for freedom from the service of the Law.

An owl hooted, long and low and ominous, and the man himself sighed. 

I followed him with my eyes as he walked slowly, favouring his right leg, in the direction of the town. 

I will see him safe behind bars, if it is the very last thing that I do.


	3. Paris

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He perceived amid the shadows the terrible rising of an unknown moral sun; it horrified and dazzled him; an owl forced to the gaze of an eagle._ – Vol 5 Book 4 Ch 1  
>  _“There are rough outlines in nature; there are, in creation, ready-made parodies; a beak which is not a beak, wings which are not wings, gills which are not gills, paws which are not paws, a cry of pain which arouses a desire to laugh, there is the duck. Now, since poultry exists by the side of the bird, I do not see why classic tragedy should not exist in the face of antique tragedy."_ – Vol 3 Book 4 Ch 3

____ August, 1832_

This unofficial note is being written from No. 55 Rue Plumet in the Invalides district. It is the residence of one Ultime Fauchelevent, the current alias of the convict Jean Valjean. Its roof also presently shelters the former Inspector Javert. 

On 6 June 1832, the convict rescued the Inspector from the hands of insurgents from the barricades at the Chanvrerie. A criminal, an owl, a creature of night, who had every reason to take his revenge and then take flight, chose instead to free the man who had pursued him relentlessly for so many years. 

The Inspector stared into the gaze of an eagle, and sought to tender his resignation from his position and his life by seeking an ending in the Seine. 

Regrettably, the Inspector's superior refused to accept said notice of resignation, and instead compelled him to suffer the ignominy of a second rescue at the hands of the convict.

As such, I have sought to leave the Inspector behind, and to take refuge with my unlikely benefactor in this most unlikely abode, retaken in favour of his previous residence at Rue de l'Homme-Armé.

It is an old house with a wild garden. Its overgrown trees have been permitted to grow unpruned; grasses and weeds proliferate in an unbecoming fashion. It is on the fringes of the respectable district of Les Invalides, but tucked away unobtrusively as might be favoured by men seeking to lie low from the authorities for one reason or another.

It may not be an appropriate sort of abode for the Inspector, nor the mayor Madeleine, but it seems a suitable nest for an owl and an eagle to reside together for a season -– particularly now that I seem to have surrendered my eagle’s wings to the other, and taken upon myself his garb of owl-convict.

  


***

  


____ September, 1832_

For some reason I am still in residence in this house. I take walks outside it. I have started to spend some of my days reading at the Bibliothèque Mazarine. Yesterday I sought to assist the librarians in their re-filing obligations and they did not turn me away. 

But at night I return to Rue Plumet, and Valjean has opened his home to me, as he has done the past weeks and months of summer. 

I hardly think this will do. 

For decades, I have been pursuing this infamous man of many names: Prisoner 24601, Mayor Madeleine, Prisoner 9430, Ultime Fauchelevent. Here is the unexpurgated statement: these are all aliases of Jean Valjean, of Faverolles.

I am no longer so proud as to demand of myself why I have not, over these years, managed to arrest the man and to ensure that he remained behind bars. For Jean Valjean is possessed of inhuman strength, and an even more inhuman wit, which no mere policeman could hope to be equal to, let alone overcome. There is no shame in being out-matched by such a man. 

And yet I come back to this. The thing that finally overmatched me was not the man's cunning, or his strength, but his compassion. 

For it was his act of releasing me at the barricades, his rescue of me from the river, his inexplicable tolerance toward me in his house -- when I could spring from his bed and seek to arrest him in front of the daughter who still lives here -- that has kept me meek and broken under his roof, like some sort of lamed animal, or a hobbled bird that knows it ought to fly away, but cannot bring itself to leave.

I wonder at the distance that I have travelled from the man that I was when I held the position of Inspector. I wonder why that distance does not now fill me with enough rage to seek to re-arrest Valjean, or to make another attempt to end my suffering. 

Make no mistake: I confess that I am filled with a rage that would be unprofessional in any policeman, and unbecoming in any man. But I have also come to learn that the man I have sought for the last decade to arrest may not be the irredeemable criminal I so fervently believed he was. And I have come to learn that my suffering may be of use, and ought not be ended summarily.

 

*** 

  


____ October, 1832_

I continue with my duties at the Bibliothèque Mazarine. The librarians have finally seen the benefit in my suggestions regarding cataloguing of materials on the First Republic. I am gratified they no longer shrink from my constructive views, even though Laurent still does from my countenance.

I similarly continue in my residence at Rue Plumet, and to sit at table with the man Jean Valjean, like a tamed bird in a cage.

I am not a man with an easy temper. I know it still angers me that my world has been turned upside down by that man, my benefactor. It angers me that the certainty of the Law has been lost to me, and even that I have been deprived of the certainty of my resignation and required to continue to live.

Unfair as this may seem, I find myself still angry with Jean Valjean for performing such feats and unhinging the irreproachable Inspector from top to bottom, not even permitting him to kill himself from shame. 

However, as I live under this fugitive's roof and eat his black bread, I have the impression of a far more moral individual than the Inspector, a resolute man with the eye of an eagle. He still has the brute strength he possessed in Toulon, and yet he is gentle with his daughter and merciful to all who cross his path. 

In my observations these past months, these have included: (1) the tradesmen in the street looking to make a quick profit, (2) the needy to whom he hands out alms as if wealth is meaningless to him, and, worst of all, (3) the petty criminals who seek to pick his pockets and receive lectures and largesse instead. 

I have somehow moved from desiring to see him behind bars to wondering if he needs to be saved from himself.

There is no shame in being unmade by such a man. I am slowly finding that my rage is slipping away from me, as birds of summer take flight for warmer climes.

 

***

  


____ December, 1832_

Cosette -- whom Valjean once referred to as the Lark, and I feel this is fitting -- is soon to be wed. 

Of late I have noticed Valjean growing more listless than one would have imagined of a man whose child is to enter that blissful state of matrimony. I am required to remind him to eat, and he often adopts the attitude of one who sits before a bird-cage and watches with dread and longing as the creature approaches the open cage door. 

I cannot say I do not understand his attitude. A free man might make merry when his child is wed into a respectable family. However, a fugitive in hiding under an alias like Valjean might well feel concern that he would compound the misrepresentation by signing his false name to the marriage papers.

I surprised myself by providing tacit abetment in this falsehood. Jean Valjean was presumed drowned in October, 1823, in Toulon, while falling from the ship Orion. I viewed his death certificate myself. A man named Ultime Fauchelevent was indeed born sixty winters ago, has a birth certificate, and had a brother who was only recently deceased. Fauchelevent's name is listed on the municipal register of the National Guard, and a man bearing his name indeed donned such a uniform and reported for duty. 

Who am I, or indeed the State, to gainsay his existence, or his years of devotion to this child, who had as I understand it been abandoned by her birth father? 

Valjean looked startled when I vouchsafed these views recently. Well might he be. 

I am clearly no longer the Inspector; I am a private citizen; I answer to an authority even greater than that of the Law. I hold to these views so explicitly that I am prepared to write them down here as evidence of my convictions. This man has raised this child in truth under the authority of the Almighty, and deserves to stand with her now as, before such Authority, she assumes the legal mantle of Madame Pontmercy.

It seems even more odd, but it appears that it is his wish for me to stand at his side as he does so, to provide some form of legitimacy to this position.

I have no suitable attire. Valjean has said we should attend at the tailor's next week to procure some.

 

***

  


_16 February, 1833_

The formal attire makes me look like a large, uncomfortable owl. When I attended the service at Église Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis, I noticed people staring. I ought not be surprised. 

The Lark may have quit her cage, but the greater public may have remarked that M. Fauchelevent seems to have acquired a far less attractive replacement, one who has been tamed by circumstance, and now strangely unwilling to take flight. 

And this thought, which I now set down on paper, did not even give me offence. I am caged indeed, and it seems I am willingly so.

 

***

  


_22 February, 1833_

Today marks the day when Nature itself has decided to mock my status as a creature which has been lamed. To wit: the house has been beset by infant ducks.

There are five of them. They are spherical, fluffy, and yellow in colour. It is difficult to tell which species they are at this early stage, but they are clearly of the Anatidae bird family, that is to say, of the common waterfowl that plague the streets of Paris. 

The ducklings were there when I returned from the Mazarine. They swarmed about the kitchen floor, emitting surprisingly loud quacking noises.

"Where did they come from?" I enquired of Valjean, when I recovered my wherewithal.

My benefactor coughed, rubbing the back of his neck in a manner that aroused my suspicions immediately. "I saw them when I was walking in the Jardin du Luxembourg. They seemed to have lost their mother. You know how we have recently had a period of thaw, and then it has become cold again so suddenly? These small ones must have been caught unawares, thinking that spring must have come… I gave them some bread, and one thing led to another, and it seems they have followed me home." 

This was clearly a false story. Small ducklings are incapable of traversing the entire city on foot. 

It was obvious what had truly transpired: viz, the man known as Ultime Fauchelevent had divested from the numerous pockets of his great-coat all he had been carrying around with him, had picked up the little beasts in his bare hands and concealed them in said numerous pockets, and conveyed them thusly through the streets of Paris until he reached the house. 

In all likelihood the said coat of deceit would have given off the most suspicious quacking sounds. I wondered that he was not stopped by a more vigilant policeman on grounds of illegal poaching.

Yet for some reason I did not confront Valjean in his falsehood.

"Why are they in the house?" I asked instead. "Should they not be outside in the garden?"

Valjean's mouth curved downwards. "They are so little, still! And it is so cold outside that the pond in the garden is iced over. But, look, the tub in the bathroom is the perfect size for them!"

He proceeded to demonstrate. He rolled up his sleeves to fetch the water to fill the old cast iron bathtub, baring the scars left by Toulon's manacles. I wondered that he made so free with me before I realised it: he had no reason to fear me any longer, and more, I had no reason to pursue him. 

This realisation felt strangely liberating, as if a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. 

When the tub was filled, he scooped the ducklings into the bathtub, one by careful one. The yellow beasts seemed as fragile as eggshells in his large, weathered hands. 

The creatures splashed about in their new home and quacked in a satisfied manner. Valjean smiled up at me and affected to be blithely unaware of my disapproval. Later, he spread a large towel on the bathroom floor for them to rest.

As my customary bathroom was otherwise occupied, and it was not seemly for me to perform my ablutions in the kitchen with a female in residence, I was compelled to use the facilities in the shack which Valjean occupies. 

This evening, Valjean considerately offered up his basin and razor for my use. It was a hospitable act, and I made sure to thank him. 

 

***

  


____ March, 1833_

I did not realise how fast ducklings grow. I never had occasion to observe the same: in the open spaces of Paris they seemed to change from small fluffy creatures into large hideously noisesome adults without any transition whatsoever. But now I am able to witness nature's transformation at close hand. 

Case in point: it has been barely a week, and already they have grown too large for the tub and the confines of the bathroom. They waddle around the house instead. When I accidentally walked too closely to the group, one of the creatures pecked at me with its beak. 

I believe the redoubtable Toussaint is considering her recipes for _duck à l'orange_.

However, Valjean would not agree to any plan to consume the things. He stood in the doorway with his arms folded, silently disapproving. The ducklings took shelter behind his long legs, seeming to peer out from between them at Toussaint and at me. 

Not for the first time, I wondered about the Almighty's sense of irony. After decades of watching gulls and dreaming of flight, after years of being pursued by the falcons of authority, it is the vulnerability shown by the helpless and almost-comic duckling that has resulted in the humbling of Jean Valjean.

 

***

  


____ April, 1833_

This month, the weather has taken a turn for the warmer, and the ducklings have ventured into the garden. The grass has started to spring from the ground, and they mill around the new shoots, beaks nosing for edible scraps amid the dirt.

"Spring is coming early," Valjean remarked. "I believe there were snapdragons last year, and gillyflowers, and the wisteria was flowering. In the convent there were crocuses... perhaps next month there will be new bulbs at the flower market on the Île de la Cité, or the sisters at Petit-Picpus will consent to gift us with some."

I said, curiously, "You mentioned you tended to the garden in the Petit-Picpus convent for some years. What did the sisters grow there?"

"Hands before mine had planted an orchard of fruiting trees, and melon beds, and vegetables and herbs. I tended, and God watched all of it grow."

"You might indeed seek to plant herbs. Toussaint will thank you for it." I frowned as I watched the ducklings rooting determinedly in the new grass. "Though, will the ducks not eat the things you plant?"

Valjean shrugged. "One does not stint from planting crop for fear of the harvest. One plants, and leaves the rest to God. Besides, with God's grace, there is always enough to share."

I turned to stare at him, but his countenance was entirely inscrutable, and made me feel in some way abashed at my miserliness in sharing with those ridiculous creatures. But perhaps Valjean was not truly speaking of the ducks at all.

We were still discussing the garden when Cosette came to visit. Since the ducklings arrived she has come every day, to Valjean's great joy; I know he suffered when that was not the case before. 

"Ah, they love the garden!" she cried. Then she turned to her father. "I know you will be planning on your planting for spring. Please come and tend to the garden in No. 6. It is sorely in need of your assistance and I have been telling Marius about the wonders you wrought in the garden in Petit-Picpus. And as for the garden here -- I will bring some cuttings from the strawberry plants at No. 6, and we will plant them together, the two of us, so we all have strawberries all summer, both in my old home as well as my new one."

Valjean took her hand. "I would like nothing better," he said, and I could hear the tremor in his voice, even if Cosette could not.

 

***

  


____ April, 1833_

Valjean has mixed a special feed for the ducklings so that they will not peck at the strawberry cuttings or the bulbs from Petit-Picpus. 

He has been so diligent about this that I have taken it upon myself to assist. That is, before I head to the Mazarine in the morning, I first take a ladling of the special feed from the tin bucket in the shed, and scatter it in front of the ducklings. 

At first, when they saw my approach, they hung back suspiciously. Almost, I thought they might peck at me again. But when they saw that I in fact meant them no ill, they approached enthusiastically and fell to. 

I am cautiously optimistic about this improvement in our relations. 

 

***

  


____ May, 1833_

This morning I rose as usual to take breakfast to the ducklings and the garden was empty. It seems the ducklings have finally taken wing.

This ought not to be surprising. For some time now they had been shedding their yellow coats and adopting the characteristic colouring of the wild Rouen duck or mallard. 

Perhaps they have grown tired of the Rue Plumet garden and instead joined their fellows at the Jardin du Luxembourg.

Valjean is out of sorts and only picked at his dinner today. He set aside the chicken stew and would only drink a little of the broth. It is only my fancy, but perhaps he considers the bird in the pot a close cousin to the ducklings he has become accustomed to seeing in the garden.

I would not otherwise have remarked upon it, but the house indeed seems emptier now they have gone.

There is no reason for me to continue to use the facilities in the shack. Yet I find it has become my wont to do so. Besides, I did not wish to tax Valjean's already low spirits any further by similarly depriving him of my presence in the evenings. 

I will allow that my evenings have been similarly enlivened by his presence, and that it has been increasingly difficult to return to my bed thereafter. Perhaps this is also the reluctance of a bird who has tasted freedom to return to the cage of his captivity.

 

***

  


____ June, 1833_

This month has seen little consolation for Valjean. He will not speak of it to either me or to Cosette, but since the ducks left us he has fallen into a time of silence. He only eats when I remind him of it, and I have taken to returning early from the Mazarine to ensure he has his dinner. 

Cosette, too, is concerned: she has continued her habit of visiting in the mornings, and last week she mentioned her father had paid Marius a visit and tried to tell him something about his past.

I was not sure if Valjean had revealed his criminal history to his child or her husband. I did not agree with this omission of material facts, but it was not my decision to make. "What did he say?" I enquired.

Cosette shrugged. "Marius muttered something about how I ought perhaps to call Papa M. Jean because he was my uncle instead of my father, but I told Marius not to be ridiculous and that wild birds could not keep me from the father of my childhood."

"That's as it should be," I said, with some satisfaction.

In the meantime, Valjean finds solace in the garden, which has started to produce parsley and gillyflowers and the Petit-Picpus crocuses, though Cosette's strawberry cuttings will take some further time to bear fruit. He also takes solace in a book into which he has pressed little yellow downy feathers. He keeps it in his closet in the shack together with a small valise that smells of camphor, which he takes it up when he thinks I am not looking.

I know this because I opened the book yesterday, to look within, and to furtively stroke with one finger.

Immediately as I did so, I felt shame at invading the privacy of my benefactor, at intruding onto my friend's own secret sorrow.

I belatedly realised I wished him to know he could share his sorrow. But I had no idea how to go about conveying this sentiment to him.

That evening after my ablutions, I remained in Valjean's rooms. He invited me to sit at the foot of his pallet, and we conversed a little, in the way that we have become accustomed to. 

I was very conscious of my proximity to Valjean, who was wearing a loose nightshirt that displayed the scars I had once dreamed of uncovering. There were the strong thighs and loins I once saw lifting a cart, bulging muscles that the Inspector had wished so hard to restrain. Indeed, Valjean made entirely free with the proof I had once so desired to obtain.

I could not say how I felt about any of this. But we both stayed in his room in the shack, with the stars visible through its small window, seated closely and comfortably and speaking of everything and nothing, until the sun surprised us both. 

 

***

  


____ July, 1833_

Today I have an event of note to report.

The ducklings have come back to Rue Plumet.

Save in that they are not small and fluffy any longer: they are large and flapping, almost the length of my forearm, and I am not a small man. 

Yet there was no mistaking that these mature fowl were indeed those same small ducklings which followed Valjean home in the winter.

Valjean was beside himself with joy. He ran in his shirtsleeves into the garden, and the five adult ducks milled around his legs, quacking and flapping their wings. You would have thought these were his own children, having returned to him after he thought he had lost them for good. 

I went and fetched the bucket which held the feed, and when the ducks saw me approach they flocked to my side excitedly. I cast the feed before them, and they fell to with gusto.

I watched them eat, a swell of satisfaction overtaking me.

"They have missed this, I think," said Valjean, quietly. He had come up beside me as I was preoccupied with our prodigal ducks. His eyes were shining.

I retorted, "I think they have not been the only ones."

Valjean gave a small self-deprecating laugh. "Perhaps so. God teaches us new things in the most unlikely ways."

I thought on this. "And His lesson is, what? That which leaves us, that which we care for, will one day return?"

Valjean looked away. "That has never been so with me," he said with some difficulty. "My sister in Faverolles, the Bishop in Digne, my friend Fauchelevent … they have been in the habit of leaving for good."

"Nor with me." I thought of my mother. It was strange how I had not thought of her in decades; stranger still how I thought of her now, and the trap of our life that I was once so desperate to escape.

And escaped I had, to a life of strict law that was as much a cage and a prison as Hyères had been. Small wonder that I had been so adamant that no one else should be permitted his liberty. And Valjean himself... I did not understand it, but somehow he felt the need to keep fleeing, so that he would not see himself rejected by those he loved. 

I found myself saying, "And yet, perhaps we will see them again. Perhaps, also, one may take flight and consider oneself at liberty, and keep fleeing, trying to outpace one's past. But true freedom may be when there is no longer a need for flight, when one knows one can always come back, and be welcomed." 

We both watched the former ducklings dart about the garden, and then, as one, they took to the air. 

They made a graceful arc across the summer sky, like the gulls above the sea in Toulon, like the owls of Montreuil's night, spreading their wings -- always free to return, to the nest where they had found an improbable love.

Valjean put his arm around me, laid his head against my shoulder, and I felt my own spirit take wing.

**Author's Note:**

> So many beta thanks to Miss M, Groucha and Esteven, for wrangling my sentences and my timeline and M-sur-m geography! The title, and the quote in the summary, is from Les Misérables (Hapgood) Vol 2 Book 4 Ch 2, _A Nest for an Owl and a Warbler_.
> 
> Adorable [chibi art](https://tatselk.deviantart.com/art/LM-Like-Wild-Birds-694416708) from tatselk!


End file.
